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Openreach cuts wholesale broadband cost

GT News: 25/07/2018 - 11:53

In a bid to boost the number of homes and businesses using fast services, telecoms company Openreach has reduced the wholesale price of broadband.

Running much of the UK's telecoms infrastructure, Openreach says that it hopes that the vast majority of Britain's homes will have superfast broadband within five years, with the move meaning the cost of using the network fro firms, such as Sky and TalkTalk, will be reduced if they can increase the number of customers on it.

It is reported that approximately 10 million households and businesses have upgraded to superfast broadband, but the company says that roughly four million homes could make the upgrade for the same price or less.

Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, said: “We’ve invested more than 11 billion pounds into our network over the last decade and whilst that’s helped the UK become a global digital leader, there are still millions more homes and businesses that could benefit from the better broadband infrastructure we’ve built.

“This offer is a win/win for Communications Providers, their customers and Openreach. It will help Britain’s homes and businesses to experience the benefits of faster and more reliable broadband. And it will incentivise our wholesale customers to participate in our long-term investment in digital infrastructure by upgrading more of their customers to superfast and ultrafast services.”

Richard Neudegg, head of regulation at price comparison site uSwitch said: "Today's news means that there is an increased incentive on providers - who have no obligation to pass these cuts on to customers - to encourage more of the four million standard broadband out-of-contract customers to jump across to superfast services. Superfast broadband is often cheaper for customers to upgrade to when they are out of contract and on standard broadband services - in fact broadband customers are currently spending £222m annually to stay on slower speeds."